NFL Playoff Predictions: Wild Card Round

Welcome to the Wild Card Round of the NFL Playoffs, the one week where the home stadium is a true advantage, with the home teams historically winning 75% of the time. With that in mind, here are my predictions.

Titans at Chiefs
I live in Iowa, where you only see the Titans on television if they are playing the Vikings or Packers. Or if they are playing on a Monday or Thursday night. And that’s assuming that I don’t have something more important to do, which is likely because the Titans haven’t impressed me since…

Look for the Chiefs to take this game by at least a touchdown. Arrowhead Stadium will be rocking and Alex Smith with complete a pass that travels more than 10 yards in the air. Yeah, I said it!

Bills at Jaguars
If you didn’t catch what I said earlier, I live in Iowa. We don’t care about either of these two teams, nor do we know a whole lot about them. Except for a few things. The Bills required the help of Andy Dalton of the Cincinnatti Bengals to get into the playoffs in the first place, which doesn’t speak well for their chances to win a playoff game. If Andy Dalton is your Playoffs good luck charm, you’re going to have a bad day.

The Jaguars will win this game convincingly with their top rated defense and middle of the road offense. Total points scored in this game will be kept under 40.

Falcons at Rams
Iowa boy here. Since the Rams left for California, we stopped caring about them. No, it was earlier than that. Since the Rams had Jeff Fisher as their coach we stopped caring about him. But Jeff Fisher is no longer the coach of the Rams and that is why the Rams are hosting a playoff game. Jared Goff is playing well, which you would expect with one of the best running backs in the NFL supporting him. Todd Gurley should win the MVP of the league. And the Rams should win this game.

The Falcons are eager to get the stink of last year’s Super Bowl off of them, but now that Matt Ryan has returned to what he is, an average NFL QB, they will lose a close game. Here me now, believe me later. Matt Ryan will never be in the Super Bowl again.

Panthers at Saints
“To be the man, you have to beat the man.” is a favorite quote by Ric Flair. Ric is a fan of the Panthers, which is nice and all, but the Panthers have been so erratic this year. They could beat the Saints by 20 or they could lose by 20. It’s just a matter of which team decides to show up. The last two times they played the Saints they lost. And I predict that trend will continue with another loss.

Oh, I’m from Iowa. And I really don’t care about any of these teams. The Chiefs have some local support around here, but this is really a Viking state. Mix in a little Packers and Bears and there you have it. Add to this the fact that the NFL is in a 10% slump of viewership, this would be a great weekend to spend time working on that honeydo list. Earn some brownie points for next week when the Vikings, Eagles, Patriots and Steelers enter the mix.

Both parties have their lemmings. Those are the people who will vote for your candidate based solely on the R of the D after their name. Nothing, literally nothing, will persuade them otherwise. They are dyed in the wool red or blue. You probably know someone like this. Heck, you very well might be someone like this.

Each voting district has it’s own makeup of lemmings. Most have a greater concentration of one color or another. The colors I refer to are red and blue, so back off SJW’s! This preexisting advantage toward one outcome or another determines red states and blue states, red voting districts and blue voting districts.

Historically, the strategy to win an election is to energize your base so they will appear at the polls, then convince enough unaffiliated people to vote for your candidate to sway the election. At the same time, it is very common to try to deflate your opponent’s base with so-called “dirty politics” which are only dirty in the event that your claims against them are not true.

Still with me? Because I think this will pay off.

Democrats are right to be excited about a victory last night. The ratio of committed red and blue voters is HEAVILLY swayed to the red side in Alabama. The last time this senate seat was “contested” Jeff Sessions won with over 90% of the vote. It helps when the other party doesn’t even show up. I say that because he had no opponent. Nobody in the Democratic party was willing to spend the money to even oppose the Republican in that state.

This means that the red lemmings in Alabama are many, a great percentage. So for Judge Roy Moore to lose in this election, many of the members of this voting block either voted AGAINST their dyed in the wool party, or more likely, they stayed home out of disgust over the accusations against a man they had voted into their state Supreme Court more than once.

So if enough people in a deep red state did not support the red candidate out of their own disgust, moral conviction, etc for a blue candidate to represent them rather than their familiar red, then anyone who says that all red voters are devoid of morality or care for others needs to look to Alabama and stop painting with such a wide brush. There are some people on either side of our divided nation who do not blindly march with their party regardless of the conscience that was placed there by their creator.

And this creator is one who saves sinners, not good people. Did you ever think about that? Christ came to save sinners. If you aren’t a sinner, you have no place with him. That person on the wrong side of the aisle, with the wrong bumper stickers, they may very well be just the sort of person who needs Jesus. There is a divide in our country that ought not be there. Both parties will tell you that the solution is peace through political victory. I tell you that both peace and victory will only come from the Prince of Peace who won the final Victory through his own self-sacrifice.

He has a message for your opponent. He has a message for you. Are you listening?

It’s actually quite simple. Some people say that the sporting competition is all that matters. Some say that the end product is more than just the 60 minutes of playing time in an NFL game.

So many sports entertainment outlets are looking at what the players do as a sport, with the goal being to win games. The decision makers (Owners, Commissioner, etc) ultimately look at the NFL not as sport, but as a product.

When the financial backers, whether they be the fans or the sponsors, sour on the product, non-sports decisions are made. And these decisions may adversely affect the outcome of games, but the product is what is truly being protected.

Is Colin Kaepernick good enough to start in today’s NFL? Yes. Is he a lightning rod of political attention? Yes. Who caused that to happen? He did with the help of these same sports entertainment outlets who are arguing that he deserves a job.

One of these outlets, by the way, is ESPN. You know, the “sports” channel that spends more time parading political viewpoints than they do sports. The channel who recently was forced to layoff a sizable portion of their on-air talent. The channel who is losing viewers at an alarming rate. That channel.

Colin Kaepernick cooked his own golden goose. Other current players are trying to follow suit and the league is suffering viewership and revenue because of it. The NFL is not as wounded as some would say, but neither are they as impervious to danger as others would say.

The solution is simple. Understand your audience. Give them a product that they will support. If they are not supportive of your current product, that’s not their problem. You have the right to free speech, yes you do. But why don’t you do that on your own dime and time, rather than hijacking someone else’s product to feature your own grievances?

Here in Iowa, this has been a big story for a long time now. Here’s the TL;DR: Tipton worked for the Iowa Lottery, I believe in security. With his inside knowledge, he purchased some lottery tickets, then had confidants collect the winnings once the numbers were selected and they matched his entries.

Everybody agrees that what he did was dishonest. He defrauded the other players of the game that was rigged, reducing the available funds for a jackpot. Yes, he deserves punishment. But here’s the real question that nobody seems to be asking.

If this man was able to rig an apparently random drawing, why should anyone trust the fairness of any lottery game? Or any gambling game of chance, for that matter. He not only stole this money from every player of the lottery, he removed the claim that the results are random. And people still put their money into a corrupt system in the false hope that their chance to win the jackpot is based on any sort of chance whatsoever.

Either the game is random or it is guided. Tipton showed the world that the Iowa Lottery is not random and nobody seems to care. The state continues to use this lottery as a regressive tax on the poor and the customers continue to act like they haven’t been notified that the game is dishonest and buy their tickets all the same.

Now that the smoke has started to settle, I thought I would share my perspective on fireworks within the state of Iowa. Fireworks have not been legally accessible to Iowans since 1938. My daughter may be surprised, but that’s before I was born! And speaking of my birth, let me share with you that I was born in Missouri, a state that has allowed their residents the freedom to purchase and shoot off fireworks for as long as I know.

I suppose that birthright and my upbringing in a rural area have combined into a scoffing at Iowa laws for most of my life. I have family living near Kansas City and frequent visits there marked my childhood. And with those visits, there were numerous stops at the fireworks retailers, which were concentrated (coincidentally, I’m sure) near the Iowa border. I remember talking to my cousins about fireworks in Missouri. I loved fireworks but they were fairly nonchalant about them. I spent a lot of time in various neighborhoods in fireworks-legal Missouri and never saw or heard any obnoxious displays. That’s not to say that people don’t misbehave in Missouri, but it does lend a clue about the behavior many in Iowa have been complaining about this year.

If Iowa were to follow the lead of other states with fireworks and make the sale and use legal year round, they wouldn’t be the special attraction they are in Iowa right now. Even if the state doesn’t make a change, I expect next year to be less rowdy as this year. Remove the stigma and you remove most of the problem. Not all, but most. That is my prediction. Future years will not be as crazy as the very first year people were able to purchase and use fireworks. And again, the problems will only be reduced further if the state grants the citizens the right to extend their freedoms to the point where the novelty is gone. Wow, that last sentence was hard to write!

Facebook has been crazy with people complaining about the behavior of their neighbors. They are shooting off fireworks beyond the approved hours. They are leaving the debris in public places or on the neighbor’s property. They are scaring pets. In short, they are being inconsiderate neighbors. The solution for inconsiderate neighbors is not to restrict the rights of responsible neighbors. The solution is to address the behavior. So I ask, why are people calling for all fireworks to be illegal in Iowa but nobody is upset that the local law enforcement hasn’t been addressing the poor offenders? Why is the first instinct to remove the legal rights of the (literal) silent majority who do follow good neighborly practices?

The problem is with the poor neighbors and the problem is with the mindset of many who are offended by them. There, I said it. Our culture is at its best when we are not rude to one another and perpetually offended by others while we overlook our own shortcomings.

One final note about my younger years and my fascination with fireworks, enhanced to be sure by the excitement of having something that the state I lived in thought shouldn’t be legal. I shot off fireworks frequently when I was young. I lived. I felt like James Bond. It was awesome. I introduced them to my son. We cleaned up after ourselves and respected our neighbors. I taught him to respect them and not to be stigmatized by them. The rest of Iowa will settle down about them if the Iowa legislature only allows us to get through the newness of this freedom that neighboring states have handled just fine all along.

I know that I haven’t exactly been faithful to my resolution for 2017, that being my desire to complain more. Well that changes right now, at least for one post. You see, I had to go to work today. On July the 5th. But I got all day off yesterday so I could… run errands. I’m not complaining about running errands mind you. I’m complaining about getting an illogical day off.

Sure, Independence Day is a great day to remember my country’s OG Brexit event. And to do so I could go to a local carnival. But let’s get real. The municipal fireworks are the real main event of the national holiday and they don’t happen during my 9-5 job. They start at least four hours after I would normally get off work. I don’t need July 4th off. That doesn’t really accommodate the holiday because when those fireworks have finished, everyone disperses.

Once you’ve gotten back to your car, gotten the car out of the parking lot, managed to get on a main road and returned home it’s pretty late. But you’re OK. You had the whole day off! Nevermind the fact that you will need to get up at your regular time tomorrow and go back to work.

That’s a travesty. We should celebrate Independence day with July 4th fireworks and July 5th office closings. Let an evening carnival and nighttime fireworks serve as the peak of the holiday, not as the conclusion! This is something I would do, were I king of the world.

Of course, getting out from under the thumb of a monarchy is the whole reason we celebrate Independence Day. I guess I’ll settle for being free to complain.